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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25744132">With a mattress on his back.</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/3DBABE1999/pseuds/3DBABE1999'>3DBABE1999</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), Star Trek: The Original Series</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Tarsus IV</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 03:00:11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Rape/Non-Con</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,487</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25744132</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/3DBABE1999/pseuds/3DBABE1999</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>..</p><p>..</p><p>I don't know how to give a Summary to this without giving the whole story away..</p><p>Sooo....</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>65</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>With a mattress on his back.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>..</p><p>..</p><p>Nyota never thought she would find herself waking up in her dorm room one morning only to realize her memory was a hazy blank and her underwear were laying torn and discarded beside her bed and that her body was sore in places and ways that could mean only bad things.</p><p>She had sat a shivering and upset mess in a waiting room chair at the hospital to be checked and tested. </p><p>There were Reports filed and everything was taken care of so officially that Uhura thought for sure that the person who had did this to her would be punished.</p><p>She even knew who her attacker was and she had clearly and concisely stated as much.</p><p>A Cadet named Finnegan. </p><p>She was supposed to have met him in the library to tutor him for his Xenolinguistics Class.</p><p>But then there had been a knock on the door of her dorm room.</p><p>Finnegan was on the other side with the excuse of wanting to walk with her to the library so he could point to things outside and she could tell him the Andorian word for those things because he was a visual learner. It honestly hadn't seemed unusual at any way at the time.</p><p>Out of politeness she had offered a drink.. Soda... She had poured them both a small glass.</p><p>She had excused herself and turned her back on him for the briefest of seconds to gather her books and notes. She has turned back around and downed her soda, it was a pretty sweltering evening and the cold drink had been welcomed.</p><p>But that brief second she had turned her back had been enough time for Finnegan to have dropped something into her drink.</p><p>The effects had been almost instant.</p><p>She honestly does not remember much at all from the moment she sat her glass down till the moment she woke up confused the next morning. It wasn't until she had taken stock of the state of her torn underwear and the soreness of her body that she realized what had happened.</p><p>And there was all of this proof.</p><p>Blatant proof that Finnegan was guilty.</p><p>Security camera footage of him outside of her dorm room, the materials gathered in the Rape Kit.</p><p>It should have been an open and shut case ending with Finnegan behind bars.</p><p>But then there was suddenly witnesses that Uhura had flirted with Finnegan at some point and suddenly it was her that was under scrutiny.</p><p>Weeks passed and more women were victimized.</p><p>Nyota had not been the first and she had not been the last...</p><p>It wasn't just Finnegan either. Apparently Finnegan had a few like minded friends who all used the same sort of methods to trick and drug their victims and then also use the same kinds of tactics to get away with it all....</p><p>Nyota ended up finding the group of other survivors through a friend.</p><p>The group met every week.</p><p>And every week the numbers grew.</p><p>Eventually they could be silent no longer.</p><p>They organized a Carry That Weight protest and posted flyers inviting all victims who had suffered sexual assault on campus to bring their mattress and join the protest.</p><p>On the day of the protest the women all lined up carrying their mattresses on their backs and marched around the school having some people show support and having others show ridicule for the movement.</p><p>As they marched other women would come carrying their own mattresses and join the march adding to the numbers of rape survivors.</p><p>Then...</p><p>Jim Kirk.</p><p>The rock in Nyota's shoe.. The thorn in her side...</p><p>Came out of his own dorm building...</p><p>With a mattress on his back.</p><p>The women in the group began accosting him. Shouting as they asked just what the hell he thought he was doing... Asking in a shout if he was mocking them.</p><p>The onlookers.. Both sides, some of those who supported the rape survivors and even some of those who were against them, voiced their objections at Jim's presence, just in different ways.</p><p>The front of the group of rape survivors pushed Jim back, cursing him and calling him sick for mocking them, the onlookers pushed Jim away from them which meant towards the group of rape survivors, for a few minutes Jim was volleyed back and forth between groups with so much yelling at Jim and Jim dropping his mattress and just leaving it there as he ran back into his building. People cheered as he ran.</p><p>Something about watching Jim leave didn't feel right to Nyota..</p><p>She sat her mattress next where Jim's was haphazardly discarded and hurried after him.</p><p>She didn't like Jim at all. Even on Jim's best days.</p><p>The man had made a bad first impression and that is what had stuck.</p><p>But.. As Nyota has observed from afar, Jim either flirts or fights or both, with literally everything that moves and so as bad as that first impression of Jim was, she took a bit less offense to the way he had acted when she had first met him.</p><p>After all Nyota's roommate Gaila also flirts, fights or both with literally everything that moves and she is Nyota's best friend so, Nyota gets that maybe she had double standards and she had judged Jim a bit harshly because of that.</p><p>And while Jim was not exactly her friend and she still did not exactly like him, watching Jim flee being ridiculed and physically accosted had felt like watching Galia shrink in on herself all the times someone told her that Orions can't be raped because they always want it and "You can't rape the willing.", Galia was supposed to have come to join the protest carrying her own mattress on her back but as the group passed the building where Nyota's and Gaila's room was, Gaila did not join..</p><p>Thinking on it now.. Nyota wonders if Gaila would have received the same response as Jim..</p><p>It was not difficult for Nyota to catch up to where Jim was.</p><p>The man was sat against a wall next to a dorm room door, his knees were pulled to his chest and he was resting his arms across his bent knees and resting his forehead against the side of his arms.</p><p>"Jim?" Nyota called to him..</p><p>Jim looked up at her with red rimmed eyes.</p><p>"Sorry." Jim replied, his voice a roughened whisper. "I didn't realize the flyers meant women protesters only."</p><p>"The flyers meant rape survivors who were sexually assaulted on campus.." Nyota replied "Were you.. trying to stand in for someone you know was raped but wouldn't protest for themselves?" she asked, thinking of how close Jim and Gaila were as friends.</p><p>Jim shook his head no.. "For myself.."</p><p>Nyota stood there and she knew she was shaking her head no.. But in disbelief not..</p><p>Jim interrupted her thoughts as he took in her shaking her head like she was refuting what he was insinuating. "But.. It doesn't matter.. Nevermind.. I shouldn't have showed up.."</p><p>"How did it happen?" She blurted out not meaning too.</p><p>When Jim looked up at her so warily like he would rather not share his pain with someone who he thought wouldn't believe him...</p><p>She rambled out her own story.. Not knowing why.. She shared her own pain with him and how the fact that there was more scrutiny on her than her assailant had hurt and infuriated her.. </p><p>Jim tilted his head down and to the side, looking away from her as if he couldn't bear to see her reactions as he tentatively told her what had happened to him right there at Starfleet Academy, right on campus and how it went further than that. He had known his assailant from childhood.. Had been victimized by his assailant since childhood save for one brief reprieve that had turned into a Hell with rotting crops and rotting corpses and even more sexual assaults but from groups of strangers.. </p><p>She listened as Jim talked about how he had thought he was safe here .. But then he hadn't realized the odds of seeing the uncle who had spent his childhood molesting him. Because Jim's uncle worked for Starfleet and Jim hadn't thought of the odds that the man would ever be on the campus at Starfleet Academy. Somewhere inside his mind, Jim blamed himself for letting his guard down the way he did.</p><p>Nyota was shaking her head no again..</p><p>But now she was down on the floor with Jim, their knees almost touching.</p><p>"No.." She whispered as she pulled him into a sideways hug.. "It isn't your fault.."</p><p>Twenty minutes later.. The doors that James Tiberius Kirk had ran through while fleeing ridicule and being physically accosted, opened again.</p><p>Two figures emerged, their arms linked, elbow in elbow..</p><p>Two discarded mattresses were retrieved.</p><p>And they marched. With mattresses on their backs.</p><p>Carrying that weight.</p>
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